UA Students’ Films Honored at Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility and the department of telecommunication and film at The University of Alabama are proud to announce that two films from the most recent class of Documenting Justice have received awards at the annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham.

“Fine Lines” by Lucy Ricketts and Cory Pennington and “Foundation for Success” by Sarah Louise Smith and Mitch De Anda both won the Alabama Citation for Excellence Award in the category of Excellence in Documenting Educational Disparity. All four students are first-time filmmakers.

“Fine Lines” chronicles the history of the Tuscaloosa City School Board’s decision to rezone local school districts and the impact those decisions had on the students, parents and communities involved. “Foundation for Success” focuses on the remarkable story of E.D. Nixon Elementary School in Montgomery by answering the question of how a low-performing, high-poverty school can become one of the most outstanding schools in Alabama in only three years.

Named one of Time magazine’s Film Festivals For the Rest of Us, the 10th annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival is a celebration of independent cinema held in Birmingham’s historic Theater District. Since its debut, the festival has attracted filmmakers and audiences from across the world who discover new talent and welcoming crowds. The two student-produced documentaries were first completed as part of the UA Documenting Justice course.

Focusing on stories of justice and injustice in Alabama, Documenting Justice students learn how to use film to document and analyze culture and social experience and to communicate about issues of concern to the state. The course is a signature initiative of the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, which began in fall 2005 as a result of a gift from Mignon C. Smith to establish a university-based ethics program that would support the study of ethics and develop projects to nurture social responsibility and reflective, thoughtful citizenship. Learn more about Documenting Justice as well as the other initiatives of the Center by visiting http://cesr.ua.edu/.

For more information, contact the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility at 205/348-6490.